“You will get your education through masturbation”, chant the defiant girls of a Berlin borstal as they wait outside the solitary confinement cubicle to which their friend has been banished. These girls are the drumming force of the 1970 TV movie, BAMBULE, directed by Eberhard Itzenplitz and written by Red Army Faction member, Ulrike Marie Meinhof. The film meanders between heroines, peering into the lives of rioting, ill-behaved lesbians in West Berlin. The girls, trapped in an endless cycle of causing trouble and getting punished, evoke the compounding, riotous fire of European youth. It argues: the “bambule” (the riot) should never end, no matter the institutional resistance it might face.
BAMBULE begins with an attempted escape by residents Monika and Irene. They are encouraged by the chants and howls of their peers who have gathered to watch their clandestine departure. Irene’s faulty ankle, however, lands her back in solitary confinement while Monika takes momentary shelter with a lesbian couple in the city. Irene describes her prior, harrowing experiences at a convent to a disbelieving Mrs. Lack while a relentlessly misbehaving, Barbara ignites rebellious sentiments among the rest of the girls. This is the cycle of the film–from one powerfully defiant girl to another, they never relinquish their staunch opposition to repression. It’s helpful to quote the film’s screenwriter here: “Protest is when I say I don’t like this and that. Resistance is when I see to it that things that I don’t like no longer occur.” And boy do the girls resist! In the face of lessened wages, more assigned labor, and general humiliation by their teachers, the girls continue to play. It’s as if they know the abuse will come anyway, so they might as well enjoy the warmth of the fire while it burns them.
It’s not necessarily a plot driven film, but it is driven, namely by the characters. Monika is terse, calculated, and efficient. She moves through the world with a masculine swagger, and she doesn’t arduously grapple with the fact that her disapproving mother is abused by her drunk father. Irene is often weepy and traumatized, but she finds her footing by the time the school tries transmitting her back to the convent whence she came. Barbara is a rambunctious and thrilling voice, and she never fails to bite back at teachers who punish her friends. There is one moment that I find particularly poignant related to Barbara: after getting in trouble for smoking in her room, Barbara seems to brush it off as she does her other tellings-off. But, when her friend smokes a cigarette in the middle of the night, she suddenly starts critiquing her: “smoking is forbidden”. It’s a moment where Barbara is completely unrecognizable as a revolutionary, but one detects something else: a child’s plasticity in the face of constant lashings. Her resilience is uncorrupted, however, as Monika’s ultimate return to the facility re-inspires Barbara to continue their fight, their bambule.
Overall, the film’s unique, episodic structure and extraordinary characters made it a really interesting piece to watch. I would highly recommend it for anyone who wants to experience an incredible moment in history where teenhood was freshly minted and empowered.
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